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Personally, I never found IRC to be a helpful tool for learning new things from unfamiliar people. To me, IRC has always been a "grapevine" tool, where etiquet

Personally, I never found IRC to be a helpful tool for learning new things from unfamiliar people. To me, IRC has always been a "grapevine" tool, where etiquette, social pecking orders and gossip are shared amongst a smallish close-knit social circle. IRC always feels more like a social scene, and a distraction. If anything, perhaps an IRC channel is useful for managing fluid, rapidly changing situations, where you might need an up-to-date, live information source, to use in immediate decision making (hence, why bot net command and control tends to be integrated into IRC programs), but, otherwise, chat logs from IRC usually read like a disorganized array of participant's various scattered streams of consciousness. Are you looking for reading material, or a hangout?

mfjordvald 13y ago
On the flip side hanging out in #nginx taught me so much. I started helping out other people. Started a blog to write about common topics which caused me to write a book about nginx and currently planning another one. Ultimately IRC is a tool and like most other tools it is what you make of it. Become a contributor to channels and you will learn so much.
meowface 13y ago
Many IRC channels have the kind of social pecking orders you describe, either in the form of in-groups or general rudeness to newbies, but many are still extremely informative and helpful.
laumars 13y ago
I disagree with this for many application or language specific channels on Freenode. In fact some Freenode communities have a #subject-offtopic channel which is intended for the social chit-chat you described, and if you're seen making small talk in the #subject channels you often find yourself getting your wrists slapped and told to take the conversation elsewhere. As for channels I've found useful; all Freenode: #go-nuts (Go language) #mysql (no explanation needed) #android-dev (for times when I'm scratching my head while writing Android apps) I tend to think of these types of IRC channels as real time support; on occasions when I've tried to resolve an issue myself, failed and couldn't find any applicable manual, blog, nor stackoverflow question online to guide me through.
dovel 13y ago
I am not a programmer but when I was messing around with and making stuff with Processing last year I went to the IRC for assistance and I could not have been treated any nicer. It was like having 3 teachers there whenever I needed them (most of the time). I think it is #processingjs on freenode maybe. But yeah, I would definitely go to IRC for help based on that experience
dmunoz 13y ago
Although I agree with you, as others have pointed out you're selling IRC short for certain use cases. Language or domain specific channels are great for getting rapid responses to well thought out queries. > To me, IRC has always been a "grapevine" tool, where etiquette, social pecking orders and gossip are shared amongst a smallish close-knit social circle. IRC always feels more like a social scene, and a distraction. This is certainly a problem is many IRC channels, but I have no idea what to do about it. One thing that is annoying is watching interesting conversation get disintegrated by the regulars taking over to talk about banal everyday topics like what they're currently eating or just ate, etc. If you hang out in any room for long enough you're likely to experience the "I've been here since..." pissing contest. IRC is still massively useful though. Don't sell it so short. Edit: I forgot to mention that IRC is also a base for lots of open source project collaboration. Look at the mozilla irc network for an example. Getting rapid responses to check your assumptions is really helpful if you have to touch an unfamiliar section of the code base for a patch.

mfjordvald 13y ago

On the flip side hanging out in #nginx taught me so much. I started helping out other people. Started a blog to write about common topics which caused me to write a book about nginx and currently planning another one. Ultimately IRC is a tool and like most other tools it is what you make of it. Become a contributor to channels and you will learn so much.

meowface 13y ago

Many IRC channels have the kind of social pecking orders you describe, either in the form of in-groups or general rudeness to newbies, but many are still extremely informative and helpful.

laumars 13y ago

I disagree with this for many application or language specific channels on Freenode. In fact some Freenode communities have a #subject-offtopic channel which is intended for the social chit-chat you described, and if you're seen making small talk in the #subject channels you often find yourself getting your wrists slapped and told to take the conversation elsewhere. As for channels I've found useful; all Freenode: #go-nuts (Go language) #mysql (no explanation needed) #android-dev (for times when I'm scratching my head while writing Android apps) I tend to think of these types of IRC channels as real time support; on occasions when I've tried to resolve an issue myself, failed and couldn't find any applicable manual, blog, nor stackoverflow question online to guide me through.

dovel 13y ago

I am not a programmer but when I was messing around with and making stuff with Processing last year I went to the IRC for assistance and I could not have been treated any nicer. It was like having 3 teachers there whenever I needed them (most of the time). I think it is #processingjs on freenode maybe. But yeah, I would definitely go to IRC for help based on that experience

dmunoz 13y ago

Although I agree with you, as others have pointed out you're selling IRC short for certain use cases. Language or domain specific channels are great for getting rapid responses to well thought out queries. > To me, IRC has always been a "grapevine" tool, where etiquette, social pecking orders and gossip are shared amongst a smallish close-knit social circle. IRC always feels more like a social scene, and a distraction. This is certainly a problem is many IRC channels, but I have no idea what to do about it. One thing that is annoying is watching interesting conversation get disintegrated by the regulars taking over to talk about banal everyday topics like what they're currently eating or just ate, etc. If you hang out in any room for long enough you're likely to experience the "I've been here since..." pissing contest. IRC is still massively useful though. Don't sell it so short. Edit: I forgot to mention that IRC is also a base for lots of open source project collaboration. Look at the mozilla irc network for an example. Getting rapid responses to check your assumptions is really helpful if you have to touch an unfamiliar section of the code base for a patch.